L.A. councilman proposes ban on high-capacity gun magazines

In response to a series of mass shootings across the country, the Los Angeles City Council is poised Tuesday to ban the possession of high-capacity gun magazines.

Councilman Paul Krekorian, who is pushing for the ban, will join advocates for restricting gun use, victims of gun violence and others at a City Hall rally prior to the City Council voting on the proposed law.

The ordinance would prohibit possession of magazines with more than 10 rounds. If the law is ultimately approved, anyone already possessing such magazines would need to remove them from the city, give them up to the Los Angeles Police Department to be destroyed, or sell or transfer the magazines according to state law.

Many recent high-profile shootings, especially those with multiple deaths and injuries, have involved guns that use firearms with large-capacity magazines, a Krekorian aide said.

“You’re banning the possession of something that you can have outside the city limits,” he said. “I don’t know where they come up with this stuff. I don’t think it will do anything.”

He noted that if he lives in Burbank and legally owns a high-capacity magazine, “I could not drive through the city of L.A. without breaking the law.”

“I hope that they don’t pass it,” he said. “It will put an undue burden on people living in and around Los Angeles who use their firearms for lawful sporting purposes” and for hunting.

Krekorian had complained that the proposal had languished before the council’s Public Safety Committee for two years, and he threatened to exercise a rarely used rule to try to force the issue before the full council. But the committee chair, Mitchell Englander, has since agreed to waive the committee’s consideration of the ordinance, according to Krekorian aide Ian Thompson.

Krekorian had also wanted another “gun safety” proposal — requiring guns kept at home to be stored in a locked container — to be taken directly to the full council, but it will go first to the Public Safety Committee, according to Thompson. The ordinance received some pushback from members of the Los Angeles police union, which recently asked for amendments to exempt reserve or retired law enforcement officials from the proposed law.

Revisions are also being proposed to give leeway to some who carry guns on their person, mirroring language used in Sunnyvale, rather than San Francisco, which had been the initial model for the law, Thompson said.

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